Having good-looking nails is great
because every time you stretch a hand, people notice your manicure
(or the lack of it) and this creates a positive or a negative
impression about you but there is more to nails than pure vanity.
Nails are not only for decoration. Rather, they have another very
important role – they serve as a health indicator. Many
diseases and conditions manifest themselves on the nails and if you
know how to read these signs, you could be warned in advance about an
internal disease you were unaware of.

Different diseases appear in different
ways on the nails. Most often they leave marks on the nail bed (i.e.
the largest part of the nail that we often identify the nail with) or
the skin around the nail. Aside from nail diseases like infections,
ingrown nails, or separation and falling of the nail from the nail
bed, nails get damaged by general body diseases and conditions.
Sometimes when nails are ill, this does not mean anything else than a
local nail condition but most often nails show symptoms of other
diseases. Changes in the shape or the physical properties of nails
can indicate health problems. For example:

The above examples are only some of the
ways in which nails indicate about health problems. Although some of
the symptoms can appear in healthy individuals as well, an
experienced dermatologist can tell if your nails are OK or not. So,
if you happen to have some of these symptoms, it is not necessary to
panic – just visit a doctor and he or she will tell you if it
is serious or not.

Sometimes nails change temporarily in
shape and color, or are damaged accidentally (for instance by nail
polish), so the fact that your nails look strange to you, mustn't
alarm you. Only if the changes are permanent, then you should take
measures. Nails are not a real-time indicator of the health status of
the organism because they are the last parts of the body to receive
blood and nutrients.

Also, nails tend to absorb various
substances, so sometimes different kind of poisoning are still
visible on the nails, though the poison itself has been thrown out of
the body long ago. Besides, nails grow relatively slow, so the fact
that you see lines, or stains, or whatever near the end of the nail,
is more related to the past few months, than to the present. But if
nails grow damaged from the root, this is an indication of a present
unhealthy state of your body.